Mining the Social Web, 2nd Edition

Prelude

Although it’s been mentioned in the preface and will continue to be casually reiterated in every chapter at some point, this isn’t your typical tech book in which there’s an archive of sample code that accompanies the text. It’s a book that attempts to rock the status quo and define a new standard for tech books in which the code is managed as a first-class, open source software project, with the book being a form of “premium” support for that code base.

To address that objective, serious thought has been put into synthesizing the discussion in the book with the code examples into as seamless a learning experience as possible. After much discussion with readers of the first edition and reflection on lessons learned, it became apparent that an interactive user interface backed by a server running on a virtual machine and rooted in solid configuration management was the best path forward. There is not a simpler and better way to give you total control of the code while also ensuring that the code will “just work”—regardless of whether you use Mac OS, Windows, or Linux; whether you have a 32-bit or 64-bit machine; and whether third-party software dependencies change APIs and break.

Take advantage of this powerful environment for interactive learning.

Note

Read “Reflections on Authoring a Minimum Viable Book” for more reflections on the process of developing a virtual machine for this second edition.

Although Chapter 1 is the most logical place to turn next, you should take a moment ...